The Fighting Scots-Irish

Reason ^ | July 2005 | Charles Oliver

[dirtboy]

The spirit of the people who tarred and feathered tax collectors during the Whiskey Rebellion lives on in the man cooking meth in his kitchen, the family that violates local clean-yard ordinances by leaving cars jacked up on concrete blocks in front of their house, and the mechanic who breaks licensing and zoning rules by working in his backyard, while not declaring his cash income on tax forms.

Gotta love this kind of slime. Gee, I never knew that the Scots-Irish were behind the meth craze. Guess I need to pay more attention.

And we NEVER see cars jacked up on blocks anywhere but in front of Scots-Irish homes.

And no one eve cheats on his taxes, other than Scots-Irish.

[bourbon]

(((MS PING)))

[protest1]

It was General George Washington, who said: "If defeated everywhere else, I will make my stand for liberty among the Scots-Irish in my native Virginia".

President William McKinley, said: "The Scots-Irish were the first to proclaim for freedom in these United States; even before Lexington Scots-Irish blood had been shed for American freedom. In the forefront of every battle was seen their burnished mail and in the retreat was heard their voice of constancy".

Confederacy leader General Robert E. Lee was once asked: "What race of people do you believe makes the best soldiers?" He replied: "The Scots who came to this country by way of Ireland".

http://www.battlehill395.freeserve.co.uk/how%20the%20scots%20irish%20were%20viewed.htm

[Albion Wilde]

Burp! Oh, pardon me -- BUMP!

[what's up]

before William McKinley, energetic imperialism; before Teddy Roosevelt, the cult of personality; before Bill Clinton, the personal made political.” Perhaps it is no accident that three of the four presidents in that rogues’ gallery were of Scots-Irish descent.

I thought Teddy Roosevelt was of dutch descent?

[Charles Henrickson]

Scots-Irish through my mom's side. She was a Clark, from the same family that gave us Revolutionary War Gen. George Rogers Clark and his brother, explorer William Clark, of "Lewis and" fame. This accounts for the reddish hair and height in our family.

[Dark Wing]

ping

[NavyCanDo]

Thanks for the link. This is one for me to bookmark. Always looking for more info on my Ulster Scot ancestors.
My Grandfather move from Arkansas to the West Coast during the great depression, a real Grapes of Wrath story. He claimed to be, what he called Black Irish because of his darker complexion and dark hair that my Dad carried also. After doing research it seems in all likelihood our ancestors were Ulster Scots, which would make seem to make sense because the darker Irish generally were found in Northern Ireland, the location of Ulster.

[Alexander Rubin]

He was. But had a lot of Scots-Irish blood.

[neverdem]

Gee, I never knew that the Scots-Irish were behind the meth craze.

Do you remember hearing about moonshine and Prohibition? Don't sweat the small stuff. Mood altering substances have been used for at least a few millenia by all ethnic groups.

[Alexander Rubin]

Good article, by the by. Pretty fairminded, if it is intended as a literary critique. You take the good with the bad (and there's plenty of both, though I think the good outweights the bad considerably). Although, I don't think the Scots-Irish had much to do with meth labs. lol

[x]

It looks like he's counting Jackson as one of the four. The funny thing is that TR was actually 3/4 Georgian and presumably Scots-Irish by ancestry. If you believe Webb, when TR "got his Dutch" up and became angry or aggressive, it may have been the Scots-Irish in him coming out. Fischer says about as much. FDR, by contrast was at least half New England Yankee.

[reelfoot]

Scots-Irish BUMP.

[dirtboy]

Do you remember hearing about moonshine and Prohibition?

Yeah, my Scots-Irish ancestors made a fair amount themselves.

But that pales in comparison to friggin' meth.

[truth_seeker]

later

[x]

The truth is probably somewhere in between Oliver and Webb. There is a connection between the Scots-Irish and an important American conception of liberty but it's not as though one can argue that they were wholly devoted to all that we mean by freedom and that others weren't.

Oliver doesn't know what to do about Webb's association of states with large Scots-Irish populations and liberty. He more or less accepts it, then disputes it but doesn't offer anything more than anecdotal evidence.

The problem may be that Webb is writing ideal history -- giving people something idealized in the past to live up to -- and Oliver is pointing out the inevitable holes in any such conception of history.

Claims people sometimes make about the Scots-Irish can be exaggerated and deserve some criticism, but there's not much excuse for Oliver's snideness about meth, cars on cinder blocks and the rest -- especially coming from a libertarian publication. There's nothing like slamming those who agree with you to court those who never will.

Reason has problems that way. It tends to represent the "metrosexual" urban wing of libertarianism, and doesn't know what to do about the country cousins.

[centurion316]

Puritans thought their women flirted too much, their men gambled too much, and all of them drank and fought too much.

Pretty much describes my college days at the University of Arkansas

[neverdem]

But that pales in comparison to friggin' meth.

From the current criminal perspective, yes, but from a medical perspective, I can't grant you that point. Both are highly addictive and cause enormous pathology. I don't think you want to discuss medicine, do you?

[brooklyn dave]

Teddy was a heinz 57. There was Dutch on his father side that went back to the New Amsterdam days. But this is a very good article. I am of Ulster Irish (Catholic, though) decent on my father's side. Actually in Ireland at the time, the Presbyterians were not held in any high esteem and had to pay a tithe to the Anglican Church just as Catholics did. In the mid 1700's especially, the Sots-Irish came here in droves. The Celticness of these folks was probably greater than many of the Lowland Scots. There were Presbyterian congregations in County Antrim and County Down who spoke Gaelic. There was a lot of back and forth migration from Scotland and Ulster from before the Plantation of James the First---and the Reformation. Being second class citizens at home, America was the perfect place for the Scots-Irish. If it weren't for them I don't think the American Revolution would have gained momentum. For all the brillant philosophical ideas that came out of the Enlightenment and found their way to our shores, one needs anger and a sense of having been wronged to keep a war going. The Scots-Irish came over here p*ssed off to begin with, that's why they fought so gallantly against the Red Coats. Unfortunately on the other side of the Atlantic, at the time of the French Revolution and the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the British used religion to divide the people of Ireland. As in our revolution, the thinkers and theorists were from the upper middle class. In Ireland's case it was the Anglo-Irish who were the leaders (Wolfe Tone) and the Ulster Scots Presbyterians for the most part who did the fighting---the Catholics took up arms in the south around Wexford but for the most part stayed out of this rebellion because of the Roman Catholic Church's disdain of most ideas coming out of the enlightenment....ie; the idea of a republican form of government.